Hello Otterites!
Time to get a little deeper than hamburgers and muscle trucks. I want to slap a post here that will get Robert and Francis salivating to reply.
That’s going to take some big time, thought provoking stuff. Ideas that is. So here’s one, courtesy of a Lionel Trilling quote.
“Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties and of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.”
Or as wonderfully well put by Ferris Bueller, “Isms, in my opinion, are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself.” Ferris could have been the walrus you know. He would still have to bum rides off people.
Trilling was an anti-Stalin leftist, back when that meant something. He was a literary critic, essayist and teacher. His undergraduate peers at Columbia University in the interwar years included many talented writers, poets and critics. An incredible intellectual environment to say the least. He was a smart guy.
I came across this quote of his the other day and it jumped off the page at me. Yes, ideologies, parties and the like convey meanings. We need the emotional safety those meanings have for us. Yet the ability to think past the ism is crucial for a critical understanding of our world. Think, analyze, criticize, understand. You can work within the bounds of a set of concepts, but be prepared to leave those behind and think through what’s really happening. Sometimes our options for actions are limited, even though we’ve analyzed the options and found them wanting. It happens. We have to make choices in an imperfect world. We have to intellectually accept that. Yet we should never abandon critical thinking to find safety in the formulas.
Thought and action and finding the balance are frequent topics here at Snakes & Otters. As we say, thought without action is impotence, action without thought is savagery. Think and make choices. Analyze and decide. Be prepared to defend your thoughts, analysis and decisions. It sharpens the intellectual blade.
Now to hand the baton off to Robert and Francis. I am willing to put down some dough that they will both take up the baton and knock this concept out of the park. I consider this simply an introduction. I’ve often likened myself to a setter in volleyball. I need to pop it up in the air and let my teammates spike it over the net. Then we can all high five.
Photograph by Sylvia Salmi.
